UF startup combatting mosquito diseases featured at national showcase

UF has been nationally recognized for working with a pest control company to prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases.

On April 10, UF and the Florida Insect Control Group, a pest control device company, went to Washington, D.C. to be recognized for developing insect traps, said Philip Koehler, a UF entomology professor and the control group research head.

The group partnered with UF in 2012. This partnership was one of 20 startups recognized at the University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Showcase in D.C. this year.

The technology was originally developed to protect deployed military personnel from mosquito-borne diseases because soldiers are at more risk of dying from diseases carried by mosquitoes and flies than from combat, Koehler said.

“I’m a former Navy entomologist, so I had a real interest in trying to do something for the military,” Koehler said.

The research team used $500,000 in grants from the Deployed WarFighter Protection Program to develop traps and larvicidal chips to prevent the spread of Zika, dengue fever, West Nile virus, yellow fever and typhoid, Koehler said.

The products are in the final stages of evaluations by the Environmental Protection Agency. Roberto Pereira, a researcher at the UF Urban Entomology Laboratory who worked with Koehler, said he hopes the products are approved by the end of the year.

“If the homeowner can buy these products at the market and put them to use, it becomes so much easier to implement mosquito